As it's usually not viable to opt-out of those, the solution seems to be having a separate device.

Has any smartphone maker succeeded in getting more than a few percent of market share, released more that 2 phones while being immune to that level of fiasco ?

Genuine question.

In my case I also wanted an SD card slot so it was slim slim pickings indeed. (And still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress!)

> you can't completely remove it

Maybe my English isn’t very good but that sounds like the definition of unremovable.

Check the weather today, get bombed tomorrow.

We all like to imagine this super cool clandestine hacking operation using peoples mobile phones to secretly track people who visit nuclear facilities back to their homes.

The much more logical explanation is someone approached a low level employee at the MEAF who turned over a USB stick with the governments org charts and payroll records in exchange for their kids getting a full ride to a prestigious foreign university.

Seriously, you never had to provide tech support to a parent, relative, or friend whose computer got totally fucked because they had root?

You missed the countless stories about how no matter complex it is to turn off the protections, people will be tricked or forced into it? You’ve really never seen it first hand?

You people don’t know or have forgotten what a god damn wasteland computers were 20 years ago.

And equating root to ownership is laughable on its face. By that standard, root is never ownership for most people — the moment their machine is compromised because they had root and couldn’t protect, they’ve lost ownership.

I am all for right to repair and ownership and whatnot, but I really think you underestimate how little people care about basic security and the baseline aptitude with computers.

I'm not trying to be the jaded IT person, but if you've never worked in IT, you have no idea how helpless and clueless people really are with electronics. They could be a brilliant engineer but want to install The Shopping Plus App that will give them Great Super Deals And Savings!

Edit: I should clarify, this is a bad thing, but giving everyone easy root on their phones isn't the solution and would have far worse outcomes.

Similarly it is pretty messed up when people say stuff like “fire can burn you if you aren’t careful” because so many people rely on fire for food and warmth.

Having root access is not in the interest OR benefit of most regular users. Rooting your phone is a footgun for 99% of people who install random apps and will get hacked and have their life savings transferred or ransomed.

For them the article does the right thing. For everyone else, like you or me, we will not care what this article says anyway.

That's why what Samsung does is double bad. Noot rooting phone is good hygiene if your phone respects you. But if it comes with malware then thats a stab in the back.

These restrictions extend outside the particular device. It must also be illegal as a commercial entity to enforce security schemes which involve remote attestation of the software stack on the client device such that service providers can refuse to service clients based on failing attestation. Service providers have other means of protecting themselves, taking away users control of their own devices is a heavy handed and unnecessarily draconian approach which ultimately only benefits the ad company that happens to make the software stack since they also benefit from restricting what software users can run. Hypothetically, they might be interested in making it impossible to modify video players to skip ads.

Especially in Africa, where privacy and consumer rights are probably less relevant than the US/EU.